When it comes to protecting and preserving cultural heritage, our focus tends to be on buildings and objects that were created centuries, if not millennia, ago. And with good reason; much of humanity’s finest creations are located in areas still ravaged by war and devastation. The destruction of Near Eastern heritage in Syria and Iraq is ongoing. Attention will soon turn toward Nepal and the damage sustained in the recent earthquake. However, there are also examples of cultural heritage protection to be found much closer to home. Small local landmarks may seem more mundane when compared to colossal Assyrian statues, but they are no less important – especially for the local citizens who care about them. I recently visited the Park Forest House Museum in Park Forest, Illinois. This small museum south of Chicago works hard to preserve the history of a phenomenon that still affects many of us – modern suburbia.

Park Forest, Illinois was the first post-World War II planned community in the United States. Experts anticipated a housing shortage on the home front even before the war’s end, particularly due to the lack of construction during the Great Depression. Private enterprise stepped in to create housing for many thousands of returning American veterans. Planned and financed by American Community Builders, Inc., Park Forest was the largest housing project in American history up to that time. Its effects were felt nationwide; the jobs it helped create and industries it supported were an economic boost to the country. The first planned suburb in the US, Collier’s magazine prominently featured this experiment in American suburbia, calling it a “City to order.” Veterans could move here with their new families and commute to jobs in downtown Chicago, or to nearby employers like Standard Oil, Argonne National Laboratory and the US Fifth Army base. Over three thousand two-bedroom rental townhomes (leased for $75-$99 / month) and an adjacent shopping center were constructed between 1947 and 1949. Move-ins began in 1948. According to local archivist Jane Nicoll, fifty families moved in per week during this time and it was not uncommon to see several moving vans per day on one block! Temporary classrooms were established in empty units until permanent school buildings were finished. In fact, Park Forest grew so fast that it was incorporated as a municipality only two years after breaking ground.

The Park Forest House Museum is meant to evoke the atmosphere of an American suburban home in the early 1950’s, when tract communities like this were in their heyday. The museum itself occupies an original town home and is entirely furnished with authentic items from that era: furniture, dishes, toys, clothes and household goods. Visitors get a hands-on experience; they are free to open drawers and examine the contents during the docent-guided tour through the house. My favorite artifact was the original 1950’s dosimeter – a home radiation testing kit (no Cold War family should be without one). Rooms are also curated with archival photographs of the community’s early development and scenes of residential life. One photo album on display had been donated by a family that used to live in that very unit! I could turn around and see the same electrical outlet that the Christmas tree in the photo had been plugged into. Few other items connected me to the exhibit space so closely.

Originally intended as a temporary exhibit, the museum was conceived in 1998 as part of the town’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Ms. Nicoll (who also serves as the museum’s director) and the local historical society have managed to obtain enough donations in funds and artifacts to keep the museum going since then. They have achieved some measure of success and recognition, even collaborating with the Smithsonian’s “American on the Move” exhibit. Yet like the first occupants of the house, the museum’s space is rented and subject to the whims of a landlord. They already had to move once in 2007 and will move again soon so the space can once more be leased as a residence. My parents and I were the last visitors to walk through before everything was packed into boxes. Sadly, the Park Forest Historical Society has not been able to procure an original home for their next location. Instead they will move into two classrooms at a nearby Catholic school.

The planned postwar housing tracts were so successful that in just a few generations, suburban life has become woven into the fabric of modern American identity. You may have parents or grandparents who still live in homes like this and who have nostalgic memories of their own from that era. You may have lived in one yourself. American suburbia is still going strong, but its post-war origins are slipping away from us and into the pages of history as our "greatest generation" continues to diminish. What many of us have always thought of as nostalgia is quickly becoming cultural heritage in need of preservation.

What better way to preserve mid-twentieth century living than an in situ exhibit? This is a great strength of small museums like the Park Forest House. An exhibit showcasing this kind of legacy in a large museum – even with more funding at hand – would have a much tougher time connecting with its audience. Not only would it be shown out of its original context, but it would also have to compete with a big museum’s headliners and blockbuster exhibits. The take home point, dear ARCA Blog readers, is to seek out your local museums! There are many hidden gems out there that need your help. Local support can often have a more immediate impact.

Gaziantep (Antep) is a bustling Turkish city with 1.8 million inhabitants. Sometimes referred to as "Little Aleppo" or “Aleppo in Exile” the city has become home to many Syrians who once lived in Aleppo province but who have been forced to flee as a result of the ongoing civil war.

Now in its fourth year, Syria's multi-sided conflict has claimed more than 150,000 lives and displaced two-fifths of the country's population. It is estimated now that 3 million Syrians have fled their homeland since the start of war and UNHCR has stated that 1.7 million Syrian refugees now live within Turkey's borders.

Located just 60 kilometers from the Syrian border, Gaziantep has long been an established trade route between Syria's Aleppo province. Historically Aleppo and Antep were both part of Ottoman province of Haleb, a longstanding trade corridor along the Silk Road. Before war broke out, it took two hours to drive the 100 kilometers from Aleppo to Gaziantep, making it a frequent destination for Syrian travelers. Former resident's of Aleppo that I spoke with this week said that to drive from Aleppo to Gaziantep now could take a full day, possibly even two, depending on which roads were taken and which security checkpoints you needed to pass through, or wanted to avoid.

Heroin, marijuana, ecstasy, fuel, mobile phones, pistachios, tea, and weapons — these are just a few of the fenced commodities trained Turkish law enforcement officers have seized in their fight against organized crime since the start of the Syrian conflict. I underscore the plethora of trafficked goods because I think it's important.

Criminologists have long discussed transnational crime and the interface between legal and illegal actors broadening their activities into areas of antiquities trafficking and forgery. But before I get into how the square holed, perforated Sumerian votive plaque in the Independent's article underscores this, I'd like to say that those in the cultural heritage protection field would be wise to discourage this type of investigative reporting when journalists come to us asking for leads.

The Syrian war is an exceptionally difficult story to cover due to the logistical barriers of the multi-sided and asymmetrical conflict, not to mention the public's insatiable desire for instantaneous news no matter the risk involved to the reporters. More and more frequently journalists covering these conflicts are stringers; freelancer journalists paid by the article who work without the safety net (or insurance policies) of the news outlets they report for. These types of reporters don't have an editor standing in the wings saying, "walk away from it" when a story is too risky or when the line between being a legitimate journalist and an intelligence operative gets blurred.

In many cases stringers are the first with breaking news in conflicts either by risk or by happenstance. Their goal, like that of any good reporter, is purely to bring home the story no one else has. The difference though is that a freelance reporter might be paid £200 for a 1,000-word article and most likely doesn't have anyone checking in on him or her to make sure what they are doing is safe.

Gaziantep Gun Seizure March 2015

When reporters contact ARCA asking if we can put them in touch with sketchy antiquities dealers, I tell them no. Reporting from war zones and delving into the world of organized crime is a dicey proposition. Scoops may sell papers or create page clicks, but the journalists who win Pulitzer Prizes are rare. Finding the dealer that is fencing Syria's and Iraq's heritage for the sake of a story is just not worth anyone's life in my opinion. A published exposée might rattle a trafficker, jeopardize the journalist, or interfere with ongoing criminal investigations, including those with heavier implications that just the world's cultural patrimony.

I underscore this because I know there is a lot at stake as we try to draw clearer lines between terrorism, organized crime and heritage looting. I know the topic is an important one and I know we want and need to understand what is happening better. But as ethical professionals we should be asking our respective countries to spend more money on law enforcement and in documenting the world's heritage better, not tacitly condoning investigative journalism in the hopes that a reporter's shocking revelation will illuminate a point we have already surmized. Sometimes we should ask ourselves if we really need to find the smoking gun, putting others at risk, to validate we understand this problem.

If governments need proof that antiquities are tied to crime and terrorism, they should be asking law enforcement professionals directly what their educated opinion is and dedicating appropriate resources to investigate and or address the problem, not sit on the fence because statistical analysts haven't been able to provide numerical data that translates easily into the financial numbers politicians prefer.

My fear when articles like the one in the Independent are published is that we use limited examples to make larger inferences about who is moving what and for whom instead of just examining the singular case itself and what data that case alone specifically tells us. The first question I would ask myself is why these traders were eager to show their wares to an unknown female foreigner?

In doing due diligence, Isabel Hunter shared the images she obtained with a number of US academics who confirmed to The Independent that they believed the Sumerian plaque to be genuine. Not having the details of their assessments, I asked Ms. Hunter if I could have a copy of her larger format images as the online version used in the article had been optimized for internet viewing and made the inscription almost impossible to see.

I passed the images Ms. Hunter shared with me among several researchers who helpfully pointed out that there are several so-called "banquet" votive plaques in existence and that they have been found in both northern and southern Mesopotamia, some of them with square-perforated holes, including a banquet scene in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, two plaques at the Iraqi National Museum, hereand here, as well as another one of Ur-Nanshe, king of Lagash, represented as the bird-god Anzu (or Im-dugud), a lion-headed eagle located at the Louvre.

But what was off on the Independant's plaque featuring Anzu was its inscription. I spoke with Professor Eleanor Robson of University College London whose research focuses on the social and political contexts of knowledge production in the cuneiform culture of ancient Iraq. Without publishing the details of our conversation, so as not to be of benefit of future antiquities forgers, Dr. Robson pointed out irregularities within the inscription, which, in her academic opinion, meant the piece was not authentic, or at a minimum had been altered. She also added that while it's theoretically possible that the text could have been added a few centuries after the artefact was made she doubted it.*

Not to discount the possibility of a later-day alteration, I forwarded Dr. Robson's thoughts back to the journalist who put me in touch with Michael Danti, a co-director of The Syrian Heritage Initiative (SHI), supported by the US Department of State and the American School of Oriental Research. Danti had helped Ms. Hunter identify experts to determine if the piece she was shown was authentic.

Danti advised me that he had shared the Gaziantep images with Dr. Richard Zettler, Dr. Jean Evans, Dr. Robert Biggs, and Dr. John Russell who all were of the opinion that the plaque was authentic and that he would share Dr. Robson's findings with the others for clarification. It is my hope that by sharing thoughts on authentication with one another we can better understand the motivations of this particular seller as well as to determine if this is indeed an authentic looted Iraq plaque or a passing forgery.

To that end, it is not unusual forgeries to be mixed in, knowingly and unknowingly with authentic antiquities as academics and professional dealer associations can testify. They even have a term for intentional mixing, a practice known in the trade as "seeding". It is also not unusual for forgeries and counterfeits of Assyro-Babylonian antiquities to deceive the eyes of specialists as some may specialize in iconography while others specialize in ancient texts.

As soon as the explorations at Nimrod and Hatra attracted the public’s attention, forgeries began and its commonplace to find small objects, such as forged inscriptions, in the art market and markets throughout the middle east, especially where there is a tourist trade. Most individuals, cannot read ancient languages and are simply looking to buy something which is aesthetically pleasing. Plaques and tablets with wedge-shaped cuneiform script are also easier for forgers to execute with some precision, copying what they chisel character by character from photographs or books.

Since the early ’90s there’s been a notable supply of both real and forged cuneiform artifacts in the international antiquities art markets, some pilfered from archaeological sites, others lifted straight out of regional Iraqi museums, and still others gently handcrafted by modern artisans for the unsuspecting buyer.

In favor of the object's possible authenticity is the fact that the Turkish cities of Antakya, Gaziantep, Mardin, and Urfa have each been previously identified as cities where antiquities looted from Syria’s and Iraq can be found, including objects taken from Apamea and Dura-Europos, sites which also sustained looting while under governmental control, underscoring that opportunistic looting is not just restricted to terrorist organizations. Given that other items are fairly easy to fence in this zone, it is probably reasonable to assume that antiquities are another type of commodity being traded here.

But aside from the lettering incised in the tablet I also wonder whether or not the de-dolomitization (the way the
surface of the stone has aged) is artificial. If academics cannot even agree on if something is authentic vs. faked imagine how difficult this job would be for customs border authorities in stemming the flow of undocumented antiquities. Looted antiquities pass through busy ports hidden among legitimate merchandise, or through porous borders in refugee bundles or intentionally packaged and mislabeled as reproductions only to revert back to being authentic when sold on the art market.

With or without ISIS, fakes and illicit antiquities will continue to enter the art market wherever there is a willing buyer. Finding one dealer who will show a journalist his hidden treasure won't be a deterrent. Artwork from the Early Dynastic Period (mid third-millennium BCE), a time when stone was the common medium, gives both looters and opportunistic forgers a lot of material to work with.

* Researchers interested in reviewing these assessments can write to us privately to share opinions.

A week ago, 14 Maori taonga [treasures], dating from the 1800s and which were in the care of a local resident in their home, were stolen during a house burglary of a rural property near to the Hawke's Bay town of Hastings, in the eastern part of the North Island of New Zealand.

The stolen pieces included a number of greenstone (the New Zealand
indigenous jade, also known as pounamu) ceremonial mere, including the
two shown here, a closely-related patu [club] made from whalebone, and a ceremonial adze with a pounamu blade.

"The
thieves will be aware of both of these things. We appeal to the people
who took these items to return them immediately so they can be cared
for by their proper guardians and remain in their turangawaewae[resting place]."

Yesterday, Friday NZ time, all the items taken were handed anonymously back to Te Papa Tongarewa. No other details of the return have been released, apart from the fact that the items were seemingly undamaged both during their theft and during their transport down to Wellington, the nation's capital.

As news of the Nimrud explosion video produced by Daash, ISIL, Deash, ISIS, Daaesh, Islamic State gets press time. Rearchers and journalists are beginning to comment on the missing chunks and slices of the Assyrian reliefs seen from the video's imagery of the North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II. Social Media has been abuzz with speculation that these pieces may have been removed in advance of the explosion, for sale on the illicit antiquities market. While this might partially prove to be true, it is premature to speculate on this before cross referencing and doing so just adds to the shock and horror propaganda the militants want to demonstrate.

A new PDF report analyzing relief and object damage was published by Simone Mühlon on April 15, 2015 and can be downloadedhere.

Assyrian reliefs, stone slaps and epigraphic remains in the form of cuneiform texts can also be found in private and museum collections throughout the world. ARCA has listed a fairly comprehensive listing of the 76 known public collections and 6 private collections which contain material culture from this archaeological site.

Antiquities trafficking continues to make headlines in multiple countries in 2015. In this last of a three part series, ARCA explores one final art trafficking network that underscores that the ownership and commodification of the past continues long after the traffickers have been identified.

August 31, 1995

Europa Paestan red-figure Asteas signed calyx-krater

In a fluke summer accident, Pasquale Camera, a former captain of the Guardia di Finanza turned middle-man art dealer, lost control of his car on Italy’s Autostrada del Sole, Italy's north-south motorway, as he approached the exit for Cassino, a small town an hour and a half south of Rome. Smashing into a guardrail and flipping his Renault on its roof, Camera’s automobile accident not only ended his life but set into motion a chain reaction that resulted in a major law enforcement breakthrough that disrupted one of Italy’s largest antiquities trafficking networks.

While the fatal traffic accident fell under the jurisdiction of Italy’s Polizia Stradale, the Commander of the Carabinieri in Cassino was also called to the scene. The investigating officers had found numerous photographs in Camera's vehicle which substantiated what investigators had already suspected, that the objects depicted in the photos had been illegally-excavated and that Camera had been actively dealing in looted antiquities.

Tombarolo holding Asteas signed calyx-krater

The images in the car were of a hodgepodge of ancient art. Two that stood out in particular were of a statue in the image of Artemis against the backdrop of home furnishings and a Paestan red-figure calyx-krater, signed by Asteas in what looked to be someone's garage.

Having been previously assigned to the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale, the Commander from Cassino called the TPC’s Division General, Roberto Conforti, who requested a warrant be issued to search the premises of Camera’s apartment in Rome, near Piazza Bologna.

Investigators who carried out the search of Pasquale Camera's personal possessions discovered hundreds of photographs, fake and genuine antiquities, reams of documentation and the now famous Medici organagram. This org chart revealed Giacomo Medici’s central position in the organization of the antiquities trade out of Italy. Interestingly, the wallpaper in Cameria's apartment also matched the background of the photo of the Artemide Marciante found in Camera's vehicle.

Subsistance Looter to Middle Man

Another photo, of Antimo Cacciapuoti, showed the tombarolo holding the freshly-looted Asteas-signed Europa krater. A copy of this photo was provided by journalist Fabio Isman for the purpose of this article. Isman confirmed that this image was one of the Polaroids found in Camera's Renault and went on to add that during later negotiations Cacciapuoti would confess to having been paid 1 million lire plus "a suckling pig" for his work in supplying the krater.

One of the links in Italy's largest known trafficking chain had begun to crack.

Medici Organagram

As the investigation progressed authorities went on to raid Giacomo Medici’s warehouse at the Geneva Freeport in September 1995 and recovered 3,800 objects and another 4,000 photographs of ancient art that had, at one time or another, passed through Medici’s network.

1998 Identifications

Matching seized photos to looted works of art is a laborious process. Three years after the start of the investigation Daniela Rizzo and Maurizio Pellegrini from the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell'Etruria meridionale at the Villa Giulia, working with the Procura della Repubblica (the state prosecutor's office) and the Court of Rome on this case, identified the Artemide Marciante from the photo found at the scene of Camera's fatal auto accident. The photo of the statue matched another found in a June 1998 issue of House and Garden Magazine and another photo seized from Giacomo Medici which showed the object unrestored and with dirt still on it. This statue was ultimately recovered from Frieda Tchacos.

Rizzo and Pellegrini also identified the location of the Paestan red-figure calyx krater, painted and signed by Asteas. It had been sold by the dealer Gianfranco Becchina to the John Paul Getty Museum in 1981.

2001-2005 More Seizures

In the early years of the new century law enforcement authorities investigating this trafficking cell widened their attention on Gianfranco Becchina, whose name was listed on the organagram, placing him as head of a cordata and as a primary supplier to Robert Hecht. This important lead convinced investigators to explore Becchina's suspected involvement in this trafficking cell.

Instead, this article focuses on what is happening in the present and serves to demonstrate that despite the nearly two decades that have past since Pasquale Camera's car veered off Italy's
A-1 autostrada, suspect illicit antiquities, traceable to this network, continue to be sold, often openly, on the lucrative licit art market.

To underscore the conundrum of looted to legitimateDr. Christos Tsirogiannis a Research Assistant with the Trafficking Culture Project, housed in the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Glasgow has highlighted four objects for sale at Christie’s upcoming antiquities auction in London, on Wednesday, 15 April 2015. For the last eight years (2007-present), Tsirogiannis has been
identifying looted and ‘toxic’ antiquities as they come up for sale from photographic
evidence he was given by authorities from the three primary dossiers of photographs derived from the property seizures in these cases.

Each of these four objects listed below have been identified by Tsirogiannis as having corresponding photos in these archives, something potential purchasers may want to consider when bidding on antiquities that, at face value, are reported to have legitimate collection histories.

At first blush, review of Christie's sales notes on these objects seems to demonstrate a modicum of collecting history pedigree which normally would serve to comfort potential buyers. None of the auction lot however go on to reveal where these objects were found, or whether their excavation and exportation from their country of origin were legal.

This should be the first alarm bell to any informed collector considering a purchase on the licit antiquities market. ARCA reminds its readers and buyers of art works that lack of this information in an object's collection history should be a strong signal that the object may be suspect and that it is better to walk away from a beautiful antiquity than purchase an object that quite possibly may have been looted or illegally exported.

Extracts from Notes by Dr. Tsirogiannis on the Christie's Auction Lots

Regarding Lot 83

Christie's catalogue does not include any collecting history of this
Greek amphora before its appearance in Japan in the 1980's.
Documentation in the Becchina archive links Becchina to three German
professors regarding the examination of the amphora in the 1970's.

Regarding Lot 102

From Watson's and Todeschini's book, we know that in the 1980's Medici used to consign antiquities to Sotheby's in London, through various companies and individuals. Why does the Christies auction not include any collecting history before the 1985 Sotheby's auction.

Regarding Lot 108

Again, Christie's advertise their due diligence, but the catalogue does not include any collecting history of this antiquity before the 1986 Sotheby's auction.

Regarding Lot 113

Again, Christie's advertise their due diligence, but the catalogue is not precise about the collecting history of this antiquity prior to 1998.

Are these Notifications Helpful?

In the past, when Dr. Tsirogiannis or Dr. David Gill have pointed out objects with tainted collection histories, dealer association members and private collectors have countered by screaming foul. They have asked,

Others have criticized this practice saying that by outing sellers and auction houses on their tainted inventory, the objects simply get pulled from auction and proceed underground. Detractors believe that this leaves dealers to trade illicit objects in more discreet circles, where screenshots and image capture are less accessible to investigators and researchers and where the change of hands from one collector to another adds a future layer of authenticity, especially where private collections in remote location buyers are less likely to be questioned.

I would counter these concerns by saying that researchers working on this case diligently work to not impede ongoing investigations by the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale and Italy's Procura della Repubblica and to notify the appropriate legal authoritiesin the countries where these auctions take place. In the case of these four antiquities INTERPOL, the Metropolitan Police and the Italian Carabinieri have been notified.

But police officers and dedicated researchers only have so many sets of eyes and the prosecution of art crime requires dedicated investigators and court hours not often available to the degree to which this complex problem warrants. To mitigate that, it is time that we dedicate more time educating the opposite end of the looting food chain; the buyer.

The academic community needs to learn to apply persuasive, not adversarial, pressure on the end customer; the buyers and custodians of objects from our collective past. By helping buyers become better-informed and conscientious collectors we can encourage them to demand that the pieces they collect have thorough collection histories or will not be purchased. As discerning buyers become more selective, dealers will need to change their intentionally blind-eye practice of passing off suspect antiquities with one or two lines of legitimate buyers attached to them.

Buyers would also be wise to apply the same pressure to auction houses that they apply to dealers, persuading them to adopt more stringent policies on accepting consignments. Auction houses in turn should inform consignors that before accepting items for consignment that have limited collection histories they will be voluntarily checking with authorities to see if these objects appear in these suspect photo dossiers. In this way the legitimate art market would avoid the circular drama of having their auctions blemished with reports of trafficked items going up for sale to unsuspecting buyers or to having gaps in their auction schedule when auction houses are forced to withdraw items on the eve of an upcoming sale.

In April 2014 James Ede, owner of a leading London-based gallery in the field of Ancient Art and board member of the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art wrote an article in defense of the antiquities trade in Apollo Magazine where he stated:

The IADAA's Code of Ethics states: "The members of IADAA undertake not to purchase or sell objects until they have established to the best of their ability that such objects were not stolen from excavations, architectural monuments, public institutions or private property."

In the past Mr. Ede has stated that small dealers couldn't afford to use private stolen art databases such as those at the Art Loss Register. I would ask Mr. Ede in the alternative how many London dealers registered with the IADAA have ever picked up
the phone and asked Scotland Yard's art squad to check with INTERPOL or
their Italian law enforcement colleagues when accepting a consignment where the collecting histories of an object deserved a little more scrutiny?

Or better still, should the more than 14,000 photos of objects from these dossiers ever be released, to private stolen art databases or to a wider public audience, how would the IADAA ensure that its membership actually cross-examine the entire archival record before signing off that the object is not tainted? Mr. Ede has also indicated previously that the IADAA only requires its
members to do checks on objects worth more than £2000. Items of lessor
value would take too much time or prove too costly to the dealers.

In 2015 is it correct for dealers to remain this passive and wait for law enforcement to tell them something is afoot? Would the general public accept such an attitude from used car sellers regarding stolen cars?

I am curious how Professor Maamoun Abdulkarim, Director General Art and Museums, Syria who is also speaking at this event would feel about low valued items being excluded from the IADAA's "clean or tainted" cross checks or if Mr. Ede has any workable suggestions that would actually begin to address this problem in an active, rather than passive way among the art dealing community.

Will blood antiquities be held to a higher standard of evaluation given the public's interest while it remains business as usual for objects looted from source countries not involved in civil war or conflict?

Tunisia’s democratic transition has been wounded by the atrocious attack at the Bardo Museum last 18th of March. Under the machinegun fire of Qatiba Okba Ibn Nafâa, a terrorist cell linked to Al Qaeda in theMaghreb, 22 people died and more than 40 were injured.

Despite the claim of responsibility from the so called Islamic State, Tunisian authorities identified 21 individuals of Okba Ibn Nafâa split into four operative groups that carefully planned the operation (1). The role of the first group was to choose the target and make the necessary reconnaissance of the museum. The second group was responsible for the logistics, the provision of weapons, and explosives. The third group perpetrated the attack, while the fourth group taped and disseminated the images through the internet.

Families gathering in from of the museum (morning)

The timing and venue were not casually chosen. The complex commonly called “the Bardo” bears a deep historic and symbolic value, as it was a palace of the Beys, the former rulers of the country. After Tunisia’s Independence, one wing was converted into a museum and the other wing turned into the Parliament, now the Assembly of the People's Representatives. The unique mosaic collection of the Bardo Museum – the largest in the world - contains mainly Roman art. In this context, the attack could be interpreted as a violent message against both democracy and any other form of non-Islamic culture.

Geologist Jallouli holding a sign saying
"No to terrorism" "No fear, no panic,
Tunisia is protected by its people"
(morning)

The attack was also timely as the National Terrorist Act was being discussed that same morning in the Parliament; children had school holidays and were present in the musuem in great numbers; and, as reported by a guide present at the scene (2), terrorists waited for the arrival of tourist buses coming from the cruise ships that dock every Wednesday at La Goulette. Hiding machine guns in large backpacks, they had time to spread out through the Museum and wait for the visitors to arrive. Tourists were selected as a suitable target to wreck the country’s shaken economy, highly dependent on tourism.

As a result of this murderous attack, the lead suspect of the cell and 46 terrorists (3) have been eliminated or arrested. Several heads of security in charge of the Bardo area, as well as six commanders of police and intelligence services have been dismissed.(4)

The Tuesday After

International media said the museum would open to the public on Tuesday 24th, but the few hundred people that showed up could only gather around the gate. Inside, an official opening ceremony was taking place. Security was tight, polite but tense. Under steady rain, men, women, and children gathered to show support. The feeling floating in the air was neither anger nor fear, but rather sadness.

I spoke to Geologist Kamal Jallouli, representative of the civil society at the National Parliament, who had been there a few hours before the attack. Emotionally touched, he told me about his childhood when he would spend Sundays exploring the museum’s collection with his parents. He praises the long, diverse history of the country and warns me that the investigation into the attack is still open. I knew that there would be many answers he could not provide, but I still asked the questions:

Q. Some international sources talk about the attack being initially directed at the Parliament but that ended up taking place in the museum. Nevertheless, it looked to me as if the venue was carefully selected. Do you think the attack was initially directed to the parliament?

-“No”, he answered shortly.

Q. In that case, one might infer that the terrorists were familiar with the museum, and must have visited it many times. Could they have been identified had the museum guards carried out effective surveillance?

-“I guess so”

Q. Is it plausible to think of an insider providing assistance?

-“I cannot answer that question”

Q. Do you think this type of attack could escalate into plundering Tunisia’s heritage sites?

Kamal Jallouli is confident that as we speak, security forces are being deployed to guard archeological sites, other museums and touristic spots. He doesn’t think that this incident is part of a larger plot.

Q. A few days before the attack, downtown Tunis looked heavily guarded: police checkpoints, dogs sniffing cars, hand bags being checked and several forces being deployed. So why, in such a “hot spot” was security so lax?

–“Because we Tunisians are candid, we have no tradition of violence”, he replies with a shy smile.

His answer is the most convincing one I have received so far.

Foreign demonstrators showing support (afternoon)

Hours passed by, and as steady rain was transformed into a downpour, a human river also flooded the streets around the Bardo Museum. Nearly 50,000 people of all sorts and several nations participated in an inspirational, almost spontaneous, demonstration against terrorism. The museum’s gate was the final goal of the crowds taking part in the march. The happy coincidence with the World Social Forum taking place in Tunis, engrossed the international presence and added to the feeling of solidarity.

In parallel, the deployment and weaponry of security forces was significantly heavier than in the early hours, but the ambiance was festive and police and army elements were friendly. Participants would smile and take proud pictures with police and military… certainly not the typical interaction between security forces and demonstrators.

Under the rain, music, dance, chants and cameras show how cultural heritage could be an effective tool to build peace. The feeling floating in the air was hope.

Proud demonstrators
with friendly soldier
(afternoon)

Museum Security

The Bardo attack had a triple target: it was an attack against democracy, against tourism and against culture. The Bardo Museum is not an exceptional example of how close, physically and symbolically, many museums are to power centers. Many other cities in the world could have been victims of such an attack, and this should send a warning to all cultural institutions: to be fully prepared for this and other types of catastrophes.

In recent years, we have witnessed how cultural heritage has been devastated due to political instability, religious fundamentalism, and armed conflicts; similar crimes, could be perpetrated in comparable places.

Operators should engage in an active preventive role, carrying out proper selection and training of staff and making sure that the risk to visitors, personnel or the collection is minimized. Museum security is a professional activity that should not be left to amateurs.

The accompanying photos were all taken by the author on March 24, 2015.